Highlights

  • The Final Shape expansion smoothly concludes a 10-year story arc with emotional highs, deep character development, and engaging encounters.
  • Salvation's Edge raid offers the most challenging experience, requiring multitasking and strategic gameplay to defeat the ultimate antagonist.
  • The difficulty of Salvation's Edge makes it Destiny 2's longest raid yet, satisfying fans who wanted a more challenging experience than previous raids.

Destiny 2's latest expansion, The Final Shape, satisfyingly wraps up a ten-year story arc that began in 2014 with the release of Destiny. The Final Shape's campaign sees players in full pursuit of the Witness as they enter the Traveler with the intent of enacting the final shape and bringing everything to an end. The story is full of emotional highs and lows, plenty of deep character development for Destiny's most established characters, and engaging encounters meant to keep players on their toes — especially those who enjoy it on Legendary difficulty.

While The Final Shape's campaign ends in a confrontation with the Witness, there is arguably nothing compared to the showdown with the Witness that occurs during the new Salvation's Edge raid that launched just a few days after the expansion's release. As one of the biggest activities in the last ten years due to its final encounter, as well as the poor reception of Lightfall's raid, Root of Nightmares, Salvation's Edge had a lot riding on it. Fortunately, it has paid off in many ways, serving as the best way Destiny 2 could have brought the franchise's original story to an end and kept its promise to bring players face-to-face with the ultimate antagonist.

Guardians lined up in Destiny 2 The Final Shape
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Destiny 2: The Final Shape's Last Encounter Is a Multitasking Nightmare (or a Multitasker's Dream)

The final encounter in Destiny 2: The Final Shape's campaign requires players to juggle a multitude of mechanics while trying to defeat the boss.

Destiny 2's Salvation's Edge Raid Is the Ultimate End to a Ten-Year Story

The Salvation's Edge raid was supposed to be an epic fight against Destiny's overarching antagonist, so it had to be difficult. If it ended up being as easy as Root of Nightmares, which had more completions on the first day of its release than any other raid in Destiny history, there would have been outrage from the community. If it was meant to be the fight against the most powerful being in the Destiny universe, Bungie needed to ensure that the fight was difficult. As it turns out, to say Salvation's Edge is difficult is an understatement, as it presents the greatest challenge ever to come to Destiny.

When the race to World's First for Salvation's Edge began on June 7, no one knew what to expect going into it. On the other hand, it might be safe to say that many fans were expecting it to be another easy raid like Root of Nightmares. Root of Nightmares was the last raid before The Final Shape, released shortly after the debut of the Lightfall expansion, and it has long been criticized for its overwhelming accessibility. Specifically, Root of Nightmares not only had the most day-one completions of any Destiny 2 raid but was even completed by a solo player with zero deaths.

As such, some players who felt they had been burned by such an easy raid fully expected Salvation's Edge to be the same story.

Salvation's Edge is so difficult that it ended up being Destiny 2's longest raid to date, taking the first team to complete it, Parabellum, a total of 19 hours. While this was only just over the former longest raid, Destiny 2's Last Wish, which took 18 hours and 49 minutes, it was still longer and therefore more difficult. Parabellum wasn't streaming their run of it, but many content creators who were streaming eventually hid their screens from viewers to ensure no one stole their strategy for an advantage in this race. This ended up causing controversy among viewers, as many believed it stole from the joy of being able to witness the World's First race.

All in all, The Final Shape's Salvation's Edge raid is the ultimate end to a ten-year story, providing a challenge that was worthy of the series' overarching antagonist, the Witness. Being the longest raid to date, even to the point of some streamers hiding their progress from viewers, Salvation's Edge successfully makes up for the Root of Nightmares fiasco and brings the decade-long saga to a satisfying conclusion.